


In the Bloodline

by orange_8_hands



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angels are Dicks, Episode: s04e20 The Rapture, F/F, Fangirls, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Hunters & Hunting, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Second Person, Wordcount: 5.000-10.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-11
Updated: 2014-12-11
Packaged: 2018-02-28 21:34:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2747903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orange_8_hands/pseuds/orange_8_hands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes you twelve steps, to not chase after them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Bloodline

**Author's Note:**

> brief to moderate mentions/implications of: (minor canon) character as possible rapist, self-harm/suicidal thoughts, hunter lifestyle (stealing, homelessness, etc)/violence, terminal illness, homophobia/being kicked out, underage drinking; (non/canonical) character deaths //// Not 10.7/10.9 compliant; actually this was written before 10.9 aired (and mostly written before 10.7), I was just slow about posting it.

 

**~[v]~**

 

The third time you meet a hunter her name is Tracy and she lives her loss like a ticking package too heavy on her back, thirsty for knowledge from any source she can find and pressing the information into her bones until no amount of shaking will drop it. She tells you how demons razed her life down and one patted her cheek with hands still bloody from her little brother's corpse, how she came home to the aftermath and sometimes demons prefer people get left behind.

"It's the end of the world, cupcake, you won't live long anyway," and the demon left and then Tracy did too, and you think sometimes hunters are the ones that can't let go because the smell of death lingers in their throats past reasonable age.  
  
Tracy and you exchange guns for a fraction of a contact list, and you drink tequila in a bottle in a parking lot that doesn't matter, neither of you legal and neither of you caring. There's something like disconnect, between who you were and who you could have been, and this is your version of the wild west, of war, this is laws you make for yourself, to keep as close to the straight and narrow as you're capable of getting.  
  
"Try not to die," she says, and smiles, her make-up creasing slightly from a long night of chopping off monster heads. The sweat makes her skin shine and she looks like she left the clubs just closing, like she danced and flirted and your body hums.  
  
"I don't make promises," you tell her, and she flashes one more sweet grin before she's on her bike and leaving you behind. It doesn't hurt, to see the back of someone, not someone who says good-bye.

 

 

 

**~[iv]~**

 

Your mom hated clutter, and dust, and sometimes she'd yell at you for not cleaning the pieces of dinner off dishes well enough, for never wrapping the vacuum cord correctly, for always, always leaving your sneakers in the living room instead of by the garage door. She hated mess, and punishment meant scrubbing bathroom tiles, meant sweeping the garage and her fingers checking bookshelves for dust. You remember going to Devon's house for the first time and trying not to let your eyes widen, at the piles of clothing and papers on the dining room table, on the way her mom poured milk before realizing it was spoiled.

 

You came across a story about your mom (there are very few stories about your mom), and the line goes, _Amelia always wanted perfection, and Jimmy wore a coat that was too big_. It is a story of a story that is a bad copy of a side story of heroes who don't deserve the name, and you are sleeping in your truck and stealing enough money for food, and you are _so_ offended in that moment, in the moments after. Your hands are wet with gun oil and blood, you have curses and lore pressed into your mind like they can save you, and you cannot talk around the anger that makes your fists curl, at this reduction of who they were into one line.

Your mom hated dirt and dust and clutter, and you have no home to collect those things in, and Castiel's coat was not even Jimmy's. A story of a story of a bad copy of a side story, and none of them will ever tell the full truth of what Castiel stole.

 

 

**~[ix]~**

  
The first time you had sex was horrible. Her nails were too long and neither of you knew much about anything and got most of it wrong besides, and you ended up with more bruises from falling off the bed than anything fun. You were more friends than dating, met through your aunt and her mother, neither of you with a head screwed on straight (snicker snicker), and the only way you really got through the embarrassment to have a next time was with the unstated challenge - sex _had_ to be better than whatever that was. That's what Jackie told you at least, laughing into your neck, and Jackie, you discovered, was right.

"Hey," the woman says, holding her hand out to pull you up by.

"Hi," you say, still slightly breathless, and the head she copped off to save you is rolling on the floor.

"I'm Josephine," she tells you, "don't call me Jo, and that's Krissy and Aiden."

"Claire," you offer. "Thanks for the save."

"Sure," she says, and the thing is, the thing is you're all nineteen, maybe, and you clean off with wet wipes and go to a diner and fall onto food like starving wolves, and the corpses left behind will never be thought of again except for in the nameless, faceless masses that populate your memories.

Josephine and you share one side of the booth and you get the score pretty quickly, in the gaps they leave between words and the body language they share. Krissy is the leader and fakes friendly well enough, Aiden likes her in a way that makes you uncomfortable, and Josephine likes her in a way you recognize.

"Just a weekend camping trip from college," Krissy tells you, and she won't listen to the danger of bringing things back home with you, not until its already happened and there's too much blood soaking over her life to try to clean.

"What's your major?" you ask Josephine, curling your body to face her, sucking on the tines of the fork for the last drip of syrup, and because her eyes flick down to your mouth.

"Business," she says.

"That's probably what I would get," you say. "Seems practical," you add, and you can feel yourself smirk, at the way her eyes narrow and pupils expand.

"I'm getting History," Krissy says, and you give her glance. Recognition is dawning, or will be when she understands its jealousy causing her to fidget minutely. Aiden's hand is curled over the seat behind her, legs spread.  "Folklore minor."

"Hmm," you say, pretending more disinterest than you feel. You don't look like Krissy, not really, but substitution isn't always about similarities, not the surface ones. You just watch Josephine, press your leg into hers, and when you leave the diner you ask Josephine if she wants to watch a movie back in your room.

She glances at Krissy like its automatic, Krissy who is trying not to frown, and after a silence that stretches just a little too long she says, "Yeah, that would be good," so you drive her back to your room and don't say anything about the way she's mentally arguing with herself. You can guess the beginning, at least, the combination of _she_ _doesn't care/make her jealous/you can have fun_ / _being loyal for what_ , but you don't know how she'll end it.

"You want a shower first?" you offer. "My clothes will probably fit."

She pauses, and then nods, takes the bundle of sweats and shirt with her. She showers fast, while you clean your weapons, and then calls through the door, "Mind if I use up all the lotion?"

"Take it," you say, and push the weapons bag half under the bed when she finally comes out. You pass her the remote and shut the bathroom door, avoid your own eyes and dig the washcloth into your skin until you make it a different kind of red. You put on your sweats and shirt, try not to let the flash of _more_ take hold when you come out and really see her, lying on your bed and chuckling at the screen. She gets a little stiffer when you get on the bed, but determined too, and she's the one who leans over and kisses you.

She tastes like strawberries and syrup, and underneath that like her, and you kiss and kiss and kiss, wait until she puts a hand on your waist before you pull her closer, get a hand on her neck and lick into her. You finally pull apart, panting, and you can't help but run your tongue over her bottom lip, suck on her tongue and let your mouths get sloppy until she moans and pushes you away slightly.

"I don't -" she starts, and trails off, like she doesn't know what to say. 

"We don't have to do anything you don't want to do. Say the word and I drive you back, or you can spend the night and we don't have to do anything, or I can make you feel really, really good for as long as you want."

"Really, really good, huh?" she says, and smiles, but lets it flutter off. "How - have you done this before?"

"Kissing?" you joke, but there's something fragile in her face, so you say, "Sex? Yeah. Have you?"

"No. Not...I mean, I've made out, and..." She waves a hand over her chest. "But nothing more."

"We don't have to do anything you don't want to do," you repeat. And then, because you want to be better than the basics dictate you be, because you want all the knowledge out in the open if she says yes, you add, as gently as possible, "I know I'm not your first choice."

Her muscles tighten and she glances around, and you back off a little more. "It's okay," you start, and she interrupts, "No, it really isn't."

"Because your friends?" you ask.

She looks like she's going to get mad, and then deflates, all at once. "It's not like she feels that way about me."

"I'm pretty sure your wrong, I just don't think she recognizes it yet."

"Oh, well then," she says, and rolls her eyes, and you bite down on your laughter.

"Leaving with someone else probably helped," you offer, and she glares at you suspiciously. "I really want to eat you out, but you saved my life, least I could do was help get your love life sorted."

"Fuck," she says, and you're not even sure which part of that sentence got that response. Maybe both.

You kiss her, softly, though not chaste. "Come on, we watch a movie, maybe we make out a little more, and I'll drive you back tomorrow night. It's fine," you say when her eyebrows frown. "Thought you were maybe in a different headspace, you aren't, and I'd rather not be something you regret."

You think that could be your tombstone, if you were going to have one, _I don't want to be regretted_ , but you're pretty sure you're too late for that one. You won't be hers, though, and before she leaves the car the next morning you grab her wrist. "Be careful," you say, glancing at Krissy and Aiden, and she nods.

"Believe me, I know about him," she says. "But Krissy doesn't see it and I can't leave her."

_That's part of what worries me_ , you don't say, but then she's a hunter, and maybe treating your life as unimportant is the only thing hunters really have in common.

You kiss her, and wave when she glances back before walking over to where the other two wait.

 

 

 

 

 

**~[iii]~**

 

If the first time was a milk run that went bad for them, the second time is a planned assault.  
  
What did you really know, at that point? The way your mother's eyes were wild when she pushed you into the pantry, the half-told story your dad whispered while you pretended to sleep in the backseat, the way your hands shook until you curled them into your lap while your mother and a voice on the phone named Bobby decided on the story to tell cops? Salt, tattoo, devil's trap, keep your head down, and what kind of advice was that when demons and angels can kidnap your bodies for as long as they want?  
  
Your dad taught you how to pray, when you were a little girl. Your mom and you and your dad's sister had matching crosses he bought one Christmas, though you didn't wear yours very often. If asked, you believed, you believed in God and angels, but hindsight suggests your belief was your father sitting next to you in a pew, in your mother sometimes (often) skipping Church when she had a house to show and getting to eat pancakes in a diner instead of by your dad's hand (your dad winking over orange juice like your mom didn't know), in holding a bible held by hundreds of hands before you and singing in a voice off-key. If faith was real maybe you wouldn't have been able to toss it aside like trash when the reason your faith existed walked away from you, maybe it wouldn't have burned so bad when he came back, when you said yes and got swallowed whole.  
  
The second time, it was you and your mom and shitty advice, and here's what they don't say, when they talk about just how brave Jimmy Novak was in the stories about your life: your mom, helping you with math every day, crying on the phone to her best friend when she thinks you can't hear, making you dinner night after night, blocking the door so you had enough time to repeat an exorcism that she kept making you practice.  
  
You survived, because of her, and after enough time in the hospital waiting to heal a dour-faced social worker told you they located the last of your family, and the girl visiting the teenager in the bed next to you played a video of stained glass shaped like a figure from your family photographs.

 

If God was once the hands that tucked you in at night, if your mother is dead and left in some police file no one cares about, then what exactly does that make you?

 

 

**~[x]~**

 

Your first tattoo was done by the kind of person who would wear specific blinders if you bribed them enough; no one in any universe would believe you were sixteen, parent's permission or not, much less the eighteen your state required, and it cost triple what it could have.

When you compare yourself to before (all the way to before), you don't really think you were the tattoo type. Maybe you would have turned into one, who knows, you were ten and there was a whole world waiting for you to find, but you think you weren't the type, before. You aren't now, even, you don't memorialize the dead or get art or whatever other reason people get them. They are protection, painstakingly researched and some still probably wrong, (how many humans really know how to ward against angels), and it doesn't make you better but it means your tattoos get cataloged with your other scars, the pieces left behind on your skin because the physicality of this life leaves nothing intact, not your body and not your mind. You hide them in shirts and you push away lovers' hands when they try to trace them, and sometimes you want to take a knife to them, to cut them open, to make yourself bleed vulnerability until they find you and take you and kill you and your mind can finally _stop_. 

You call Amy, wait for her to finish yelling about disappearing for two months - _a text, an email, a fucking owl you piece of shit_ \- and say, "I need a new tattoo."

"Oh, well as long as I can fulfill all your needs, princess."

"I really am sorry for not getting into contact sooner," you say, and you mean it, but its also not the first time you've said it to her.

"If I don't see you by next week I'm going to kill you," Amy tells you quietly, because you are a long way from calling each other Cho and Novak and you need to respect that. "I mean it, you've been sounding off and there's too many angels still running around."

"Yeah," you say.

"Promise me," she says, still in that voice.

There's a long pause, and then finally you clear your throat and say, "I promise."

"Okay," she says, sounding brisk, "You're in Nebraska - before you ask I've been following your GPS, two months Claire, don't even start with me - so there's this guy, Mario, big dude with pretty hands according to Dave because that's what I wanted to know, he knows about ghosts and thinks he should do whatever he can for hunters so introduce yourself and he'll set you up. I'll text you the address, should take you two days, tops."

"And then I'll come visit you."

"Exactly."

"You know," you say, and its hard to tell her but you know she needs to hear it, none of you got into this life without a little damage and she started with more than enough, "the only reason I won't pick up my phone if you're on the other end is because I'm dead. I can't," and you have to pause, "I can't always call you, but I will always, always pick up for you."

"I know, Claire," she says, and her voice sounds thick when she adds, "It's hard for me too."

"Yeah," you say, and try to laugh. "Hunter Code, right?"

 _Salt it, chop it, burn it, repress it, and add some goddamn whiskey if you need help._

"One day we'll find a psychologist in the know and nobody will make an appointment anyway."

"Least we got company."

"Growing everyday," Amy agrees. "See you soon, Claire."

 

 

 **~[vii]~**

They have never been hard to track down. Hunting patterns broken down by fangirls, a distinctive car, magics from a wide spectrum of ethics, hunters who like to gossip, monsters who talk about their nightmares, they have never been hard to track down. They aren't - if even half the rumors are true - even that hard to kill, though they don't seem to stay dead for very long. And where they go...

The day you're invited back Caroline says nothing. Just holds the door open, hands you fluffy green towels, starts washing your duffel bag full of clothing. She frowns at the circles under your eyes, the way you hold yourself stiffly, and the next morning she directs you to a chair to help start chopping vegetables for soup.

"Was it a boy?" she asks pointedly when you tug the sleeves down past bandages on your left arm.

"No," you say, giving her a look but leaving it at that, because one of your confessions was going to get you kicked out and maybe you're glad it's the one you couldn't change even if you wanted to. "Accident."

You peel the carrots carefully, the same smooth motions you've learned to do most things in. "I was surprised to hear from you," you offer into the silence.

She plays with her gold cross, the same one you and your mother once had that dangle in Amy's office because there's really no other place to keep them. "It didn't seem right to tell you over the phone," she says, and then, "I'm dying."

"Oh," you say, and it actually hurts.

She tells you about her disease, the statistics, the treatment plan, when she expects to die. She talks and you both keep chopping vegetables and the only tears that get shed are from the onions. She talks, and you listen, and you are struck not so much that they look alike, they have always looked alike and your eyes are the same as theirs, but that they sound the same, the inflections that barely dent their words. It feels the same, almost, hearing things that hurt from both of their mouths, the way you take it in and swallow it down as far as it will go.

"I think He's punishing me," she finally says, and glances at you with distaste.

"Maybe," you say, and she startles slightly, because there's a rule about agreeing with someone who hurts you; mostly that they only want you to if it hurts you more. "Do you want me to stay and help out?"

"No." She dumps the celery into the pot. "I want to discuss funeral arrangements with you."

"Ok," you agree. She turns the heat up and you go into her office, turned back from what used to be your bedroom, and you use the back of your hunter's journal to take notes. She points out the picture of the coffin she bought, and you think about being lowered into the ground and buried over, think about saying yes to a creature too empty to overpower you completely.

She touches the picture with one finger. "I wanted to do something great with my life," she says to herself, and glances at you like you're the reason she hasn't.

You write down the details, she re-packs your clothes, and then you leave.

 

 

 **~[vi]~**

  
There's lines among hunters, between the things they hear about and fight; pockets of immigrant communities you better be a part of if you don't want the run around, to even hear about the problem in the first place, to get access to the lore. There's rules, among these lines, about what makes a monster something you can hunt, and they have their own ways of paying back the death of creatures they don't think should have died.

Widelene, nearing sixty with a buried child in each country she's lived in, wants your muscles and will trade it for knowledge you can pass to Amy, who was working with a woman named Charlie for a little bit, before she disappeared, not an unusual way of leaving but at least she left her coding behind. Widelene keeps you from the witnesses because you can only make things worse, but she brings you back macaroni au gratin for lunch and already knows what you're after.

"It is a jé rouge," she tells you. "A man named Elice Dabrezil has changed recently, turned mean in new ways from how he was, and neighbors think they see him, sometimes around the homes of missing children. Mothers have started to send warnings to each other."

You don't know Haitian myths very well, but this one at least rings a bell. "I have a sexton blade," you say.

She nods, and explains how you will find the man who was once Elice Dabrezil, and then it's just a matter of waiting until night falls, because just because the neighbors agree doesn't mean they want to see it, or the person who does it. You spend the time catching each other up in the way all hunters do, by near misses and leftover scars.

"He's not dead," she finally says. Widelene had an apprentice she was training, though you've never met the man. "He has a new baby. I told him to stay home for a little while."

"Is he going to want back on the road?" you ask. Widelene covers the East Coast, has started to pass the baton more unless the monster is hitting a Haitian community, but that's still a large area and she needs someone to trust her knowledge with, someone they'll trust will have the knowledge.

"He will." She flexes her hands. "He knows what's at stake"

 

 

 

**~[viii]~**

 

[message 1]

_Claire, it's Sarah Blumenthal, Jackie's mom? Please call me back. It's about your au- its about Caroline. My number is765-555-6083. _

 

[message 3]

_Claire, Claire honey its Sarah Blumenthal. I haven't heard back from you yet. Its really important I speak to you. Just call me back at765-555-6083. Or if you're in the area, you can stop by. Same house, three doors down from Caroline. _

 

[message 6]

_Claire, its Jackie. Caroline isn't dead, which mom may have forgotten to actually say, so I'm saying it, but its important and mom doesn't want to leave it in a voicemail but she will if you don't call back. So call her back. Or me. You can always call me. So call me._ [pause] _And if this phone doesn't belong to Claire anymore can you fucking call so me and my mom aren't wasting our time?_

 

[message 9]

_Claire, I'm sorry to do this on voicemail. Caroline's been missing for a few months. I hope you get this. I hope you're okay. Nobody...nobody knows what happened. Honey, just because your dad...I just...Claire this isn't your fault. Maybe my saying this doesn't matter to you but_ this isn't your fault _. The police think she left on her own, and I'm not...she told me about what she asked you to do, I could have killed her, putting that burden on you after she...And I couldn't find your number for the longest time, she was supposed to leave it so you could be called immediately but its missing and it took forever to track down a working number and...I'll call you if I know more. And you are always welcomed here, always Claire, I know you didn't take the couch and wanted to cut ties after she - but you can always come here._

 

[message 11]

_Hi, it's Claire. I'm sorry I didn't call you back sooner. I was just...thank you for everything, Mrs. Blumenthal, but she isn't...It's not like she took my place or any- I'm sorry, I didn't mean to...I'm sorry your friend is gone, Mrs. Blumenthal.  
_

 

 

 

**~[ii]~**

 

You never exactly liked Christmas, which made you a weird fucking Christian kid. Caroline would come down for her annual visit and your mom's mom would take over the house until your dad sent Mom off to "errands" to let her escape and your mom's dad would say mean things to your dad and your dad's dad would take over your room, and no one would ever raise their voices but it didn't mean it was peaceful. Three days after Christmas, when all the relatives had gone home, all three of you sat down for mashed potatoes and lamb chops and you'd open the last present they "accidentally" forgot to give you on Christmas. Once you got a new pair of roller skates.

"I'm thinking of signing us up for a pottery class," Mom tells you when you get home from school, sometime in that long expanse of time that felt like a decade in living it and a fraction of a second looking back on it. You spent most of those eleven months replaying your dad's words over and over in your head. Jimmy's words, you took to calling them, since 'dad' suggested something he made abundantly clear he wanted no part of.

(Later, after angels and demons wrecked your world and neighbors were found on your living room floor, you'd come from school to hear your mom say things like, "I signed us up to learn First Aid" and "I'm thinking of taking Latin" and "What if we spent a few days with Bobby?" who she didn't exactly _like_ , but coached you both in exactly what to say to the police. "He knows," your mom will tell you, but you'll discover on your own there are a lot of people who know.)

"What about your nails?" you ask, grabbing the apple juice from the fridge and pouring yourself a glass. It was kind of a stupid question but not really; clay got your hands messy and your mom always talked about how important her image was in her job.

"Soap and water, Claire."

"Yeah but they'll probably chip."

You aren't sure why you're being difficult, only that you are, that you can't seem to make yourself stop. Pottery actually sounds kind of fun, even if you were already pretty confident about your lack of artistic skills.

"Then I'll repaint them." She moves over to you, squeezes your shoulder. "It'll be fun. Just the two of us."

"Whatever," you tell her, leaving the glass in the sink without rinsing it.

She doesn't say anything as you walk past with your backpack and your shoes on, not until you get to the stairs. "I'm not leaving Claire. Not ever." 

 

 

**~[xi]~**

 

It's not hard to figure out, after all, from the meteor strike to the angel hunts Amy helps you avoid. The new tattoo looks even uglier on skin than it did in the book, but some things are worth the marks you leave on your body.  
  
"Hey you want to hear something funny?" Amy asks after dinner, which means it's less likely to be funny and more likely to piss you off. You grab a beer and sit at her table.  
  
"Knock yourself out."  
  
"So I'm checking through the forums-"  
  
"You are such a fucking troll."  
  
"Hey, the lore's right at least, you can use my stories as a hunting guide." Amy taps the table. "Not the point. I'm going through the forums and I find out about this high school who put on, like, a Supernatural play."  
  
"Wait what?"  
  
"It's a musical too."  
  
"Jesus, of course it was."  
  
"They put a clip up online. Kind of catchy, actually."  
  
You groan and swallow half your bottle. "Except there's something about it...I think they became some the-world-didn't-burn fans." You look up. "I sent Jolene to check it out, but..."  
  
theworlddidntburn (formerly therelworldisburning) is an online community your mom found, somewhere between Latin classes and your birthday. Full of believers, the truth seen with their own eyes and an archive of real world sightings of hunters, of monsters. Fangirls who tracked signs, read the rest of the series looking for clues, had enough real world knowledge to figure out who Sam and Dean were, the real victims they saved, your dad. They actually gave you a better clue of what exactly the angel in your dad's body had been doing, the last few years, explained the SucroCorp Massacre and the meteor strike. They even have a place to post hunts, one Amy uses as a resource.  
  
"That's just...great," you decide. "Perfect."

"Not everyone celebrates them," Amy reminds you.

 

You hold the bottle in your hand, watch the liquid swish inside.

 

 

**~[i]~**

 

Your mom and him were fighting for a few weeks, before that night. Not the usual arguments that make up a marriage, but fighting like you hazily remember them doing when you were really little, when you ended up with your grandparents for a week in April and all you could think about was the way they both had red-rimmed eyes. Your grandma kept saying the word divorce, whether you were around or not, and you didn't quite know what the word meant but it meant something bad.

You had chicken and peas, that night, and he helped you with math homework and your mom agreed you could go to Monica's for a sleepover that Saturday. You weren't paying much attention later, some paper for English or History, but your mom came by to kiss you before she left for the store.

You're in the middle of a sentence when you hear the front door shut again, and it's one of those slow realizations unfurling in the back of your mind, evidence that your mom didn't come into the kitchen to put anything away, that he was no longer making noise above your head, that you suddenly felt very, very alone.

You open the door and see him standing in front of the steps, wearing that trenchcoat your dad's dad left behind the last time he was here, what looked like the suit your Grandma had bought him for his birthday he was supposed to take in to alter before he wore because it was so huge. His hand was flexing, and then he turned to look at you.

Wild hair, the same eyes you saw in the mirror, and there's a crispness to that moment, to the memory of that moment, you're not sure you'll ever lose. There are words in what sounds like your father's voice, and they echo in you for far longer than anything else, even after you learn the truth about who said them.

Jimmy's dead, or you would have tracked him down a long time ago to ask him why he said yes the first time. 

 

 

**~[xii]~**

You stay at Amy's seven days, helping her with all the things she can't do by herself and doesn't trust anyone else to do. You clean out her attic, bring down boxes of things she may need in the upcoming months, fix her fence and the signals carved into it. You eat your own weight in kimchi and go through a gallon of her raspberry mead, and by the end you feel full and warm and relaxed.

She gives you a bag of sandwiches for the road. "So ghosts in Missouri?"

"Ghosts in Missouri," you agree.

"And your aunt?" she asks.

You shrug. End of the day, you're all grown-ups, and you all made your choices.

"She was dying anyway," you say.

Amy bites her lip. You'll hunt ghosts and rawheads and demons and whatever else Amy wants to send you after, but you won't chase them down, not the creature who killed your dad and not whoever your aunt said yes to.

"If you're gonna think it you may as well say it," you tell her.

She just looks at you for a long moment, then shakes her head.

"You can call me a coward for not wanting to face them." You sometimes think of the anger and hate in you as a stew, as something always just on the verge of bubbling over. "You can call me a coward for not avenging them, or saving them, or whatever. For not killing Castiel, even though he killed my m-" You cut yourself off. 

She runs her thumb over your forehead. "I don't care if you save them. I care if you save yourself."

You read the books, laying in the bed of your aunt's house. You are a footnote of a footnote of someone else's story, but you at least, learned the lesson, about what revenge will get you. You at least, realized, you'll still be an orphan at the end of the day.

"I'm working on it," you tell her, because it's the only thing your mom wanted too. 


End file.
